Stout of Heart
by zsuzsi
Summary: A Harry Potter x Random HP fanclub member romance. Because sometimes I feel kind of bad for those Hufflepuffs. Drabble.


Stout of Heart

Dorothea Diggs was a plump little girl with pigtails when she first saw The Boy Who Lived, sitting in his place at the Gryffindor table as she, a first year, cowered with all these other first years, waiting for her turn with the Sorting Hat.

And she prayed_, please, please, please put me in Gryffindor_. She begged that hat as hard as she could.

But the Hat put her into Hufflepuff. The same house her father and her mother had been in, during the days, many years ago, when they met at Hogwarts. Hufflepuff would have been good enough for Dorothea, if not for the fact that she was hopelessly in love with Harry Potter.

It was almost beside the point to say that her crush was hopeless, embarrassing, juvenile, naïve. She didn't even know The Boy Who Lived. She had seen his picture in the paper, a thousand times. She had pin-ups from Wizarding magazines plastered on the walls of her room at home, and she had furtively brought a couple of the best photos with her to Hogwarts: at first hiding them because she was afraid she would be laughed at, soon she met her best friend Francine, and they were giggling over their crushes together. Francine liked Draco Malfoy, and then when they found out Draco was such a prat she shifted her attention to Oliver Wood and then to Karl Broadmoore on the Falmouth Falcons. In the manner of pre-adolescent girls with crushes, Francine and Dorothea never picked the same boy to show interest in, and frequently locked pinkies to swear that a boyfriend would never come between them.

Once, just before Christmas break, Dorothea was in the hallway when the Golden Trio came sweeping past, and she put her hand out and let it brush Harry's robe as he walked by.

In the spring, she got lost between the Hufflepuff dormitory and classes (Dorothea had a hopeless sense of direction), and Ron Weasley, who was a prefect and Harry Potter's best friend, saw her wandering around the corridor and asked her sharply where she was going. Dorothea became so nervous that she could hardly speak, and she rushed away, panicking.

Her second year was the year that everybody said there would be war. Dorothea's parents called her home before the end of the first term, and talked of leaving the country if things didn't calm down soon. That was the year that Dorothea's parents had their first and only fight, a horrible affair that Dorothea listened to secretly, crouching behind the kitchen door and trying to keep from crying as they yelled at each other. Her mother had been shouting that they had to stay, to defend their family and to defend what was right, and her father had fired back that his brother was already dead from the Death Eaters, eighteen years ago, and he would be damned if he ever lost another family member, his wife or, God forbid, his children, to He Who Shall Not Be Named. At that time, they had spoke of The Boy Who Lived with a kind of reverence, asking themselves what his chances were, and whether they could gamble their family's future on his success.

For the first time that night, Dorothea had understood that it was not a wonderful thing to be a child, like she was a child, and to be given the title of Savior of the World. Dorothea was thirteen years old, and she trusted her parents to buy her books for school, to listen to her silly problems when she was anxious, and most of all to protect her – at least as best as they could. But Harry Potter was only a little older than she was, and her parents wanted him to protect everyone.

It made her so sad that she started to cry. When her parents heard her crying they stopped their argument and opened the kitchen door. Her mother cried too, and stroked her hair, and promised Dorothea that everything would definitely be all right. And her father looked on, and when his wife looked back at him his expression turned serious, and he nodded at her. It was a small expression that only his wife understood, because they had lived together for so long: they were Hufflepuffs, and when a Hufflepuff set his heart on something, nothing in the world could sway it.

Her parents went to the Order of the Phoenix, by then no longer a secret organization, in active recruitment, raising an army against the army of Death Eaters. Dorothea was too young to join: she stayed at home, and tried to take care of her younger brothers and sisters.

In her third year the war was over, averted – and everyone said that it was truly over, because The Boy Who Lived had defeated _Voldemort _– nobody was afraid to use his name now. They had shouted it in the streets the night he died, and made up rude songs that they sang as they drank themselves silly, in the celebrations that had lasted for more than a week on end – the number of muggles who had to have their memories altered growing so large that the task was finally to some degree given up on, making that year forever after known in Britain as the one in which 'aliens had probably walked among us'.

She heard that he had gone on to be an auror, and then for several years she heard little about him, perhaps because, as the rumors went, The Boy Who Lived was becoming increasingly reclusive and camera-shy. The girls still sighed over him from time to time, but as they got a little older it seemed increasingly silly. Francine even found herself a real boyfriend, a blonde Hufflepuff who spoke and moved slowly but was, as Dorothea soon realized, wonderfully kind to Francine.

She went out with a couple of guys, but nothing ever lasted more than a month or two. Her grades were terrible and her parents nagged more and more, especially after she took a miserable 4 OWLS. The only subject she was any good in was Muggle-studies, and she loved that because it was like escaping into a wonderful fantasy-world, when she read about their strange habits and cities and appliances. When one of her advisors suggested she try a semester abroad at a muggle institution, she jumped at the chance.

And that was how she somehow found herself, four years later, standing on Westminster bridge, taking pictures of the scenery with a wizarding camera that she had cleverly disguised to look like a muggle one. She had just gotten in a particularly good shot of a boatload of tourists, all talking excitedly too one another as they floated past, when a man pushed her shoulder and the camera fell out of her hands, over the railing of the bridge.

She cursed, because, in the middle of muggle-London, she couldn't use any spell to retrieve the camera. Yet, as she watched, the camera stopped in mid air, and levitated back to her. Dorothea was so surprised that she found herself touching her pocket, checking to see if her wand was still tucked inside her skirt as it ought to be, and that she hadn't levitated the camera herself, accidentally.

A hand reached out to grab the camera, and she looked up to see rather startling green eyes looking down at her.

"This is yours, right?"

"Yes..." she stammered.

"You _are_ a witch, aren't you?" The man said, in a friendly way. "I'm Harry Potter."

"I know."

She didn't tell him about her crush that day, or the week, or even the month after. But one day, after a long, long, while, she finally admitted, rather sheepishly, that she'd been on of those girls that had annoyed him so much during his school days: one of the ones that had sent in a galleon to become a member of his fan club, and secretly dreamed of meeting him but never dared to try.

"You should have been braver," He had said, teasing her a little. It was late morning, and they were tangled up in a nest of white sheets, enjoying the pale sunlight that streamed onto the bed from a high window. It was the muggle flat she had rented, as a place to work while she finished her research, and he had more or less moved into the place.

She made a face at him. "You may have been a Gryffindor, but I was a Hufflepuff, remember? All we have is stoutness of heart." She made a face. "How lame."

"Oh, is it really?" He asked, twisting around to grin impishly at her. "I think it's rather nice."

"I think you're just being polite."

But when she thought about it, later on, she changed her mind. It really was good to be a Hufflepuff, after all. Sure, the Gryffindors had their adventurers, and Ravenclaws had their intellect, and Slytherins had their intrigues. But Dorothea, with her Hufflepuff heart, had fallen in love at eleven, and had stayed true to that love for twelve long years, not even realizing that she had still held onto it. Wasn't that was 'stoutness of heart' meant, anyhow? Staying true to your own heart through anything? And wasn't it rather romantic to end up with your first love?

It was pleasant to think so, anyway, as she drank her coffee in the morning, and thought of chasing Harry out of bed so that she could cast a charm to straighten the sheets. Funny Harry. All he had wanted all along was to be normal.

Dorothea was definitely normal. Normal, she could give him.

The End


End file.
